


Foraging for Mushrooms

by seerunbe



Category: Deltora Quest - Emily Rodda, デルトラクエスト | Deltora Quest (Anime)
Genre: Crack, Cursed, Don't Examine This Too Closely, Gen, Hallucinations, Knifeplay, Mushrooms, Surprise Ending, Talking Trees, This Is Not Going To Go The Way You Think, This Is STUPID, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:20:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22723081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seerunbe/pseuds/seerunbe
Summary: Jasmine forages for mushrooms and finds one she's never seen before.
Relationships: Leif & Jasmine & Barda
Kudos: 3





	Foraging for Mushrooms

**Author's Note:**

> Enjoy! =)

Surely that wasn’t what Jasmine thought it was. 

There couldn’t be a twenty-foot tall bear sitting in the middle of the clearing. That was, by all accounts, impossible. And the massive river it sat next to, fishing out of with a makeshift rod and lure, had also not been there when she’d passed this way not ten minutes before. It waved. She waved back.

Momentarily confused, she shrugged and bit the head off another mushroom she had collected. It was surprisingly tasty uncooked. She knew it wasn’t recommended to eat them raw, but she was hungry. One or two wouldn’t hurt.

When she saw the squirrel floating unsupported below the branch of a tree, she knew something had to be wrong. Scrunching up her face, she held one of her procured mushrooms up to study it. It was a vibrant purple, with a long stem and wide top. Had it always been that vivid of a purple? She’d thought it was rather pretty when she picked it up originally, but now the purple was almost garishly bright. Squinting was the only way it didn’t hurt her eyes. She put it away and blinked, but the bright image of that purple top was burned into her eyelids like a sunspot. 

Jasmine asked the trees what was wrong, but received no answer.  _ That  _ was odd. They almost always answered her. 

There were tiny cats - not kittens, but cats - running around her feet. They were trying to trip her. She made a noise of annoyance and told them to shoo, but they continued to impede her progression. She didn’t have the heart to kick them so she continued to muscle her way through them.

Okay, so maybe she shouldn’t have eaten those mushrooms. The question was: would they kill her? Would they wear off? 

The next clearing she stumbled across contained the strangest thing of all: seven armored Vraal surrounded two walking… trees? They had sticks for arms and were holding weapons to defend themselves. One was taller than the other. They appeared to be back to back. 

The Vraal were strange, though, and it was impossible to say if they were actual Vraal or if her mind was trying to make sense of them by turning them into Vraal. 

Even if she was hallucinating, the figures had to be representative of… something. In this state, it was difficult to say which side she should be helping, but maybe she should play the peacemaker? Then again, if her hallucinating mind was turning them into Vraal, maybe she knew that they were the side she should be opposing. It certainly wasn’t a fair fight. And two figures in the center… that should be familiar. Where was camp again? 

The two tall tree twigs in the center seemed to beckon to her and they were… talking? Was that what that was? She could practically see the sound waves in the air, directed at her. Just circles moving in the air, like smoke rings, but more… solid.

Oh, dear, the colors were leaking now. That was disorienting. The green in the trees looked like vapors in the air. And Jasmine could  _ hear  _ them. The sound of the purple mushrooms was pulling down on her ears. She could feel her head swimming. 

The tiny cats at her feet stopped tripping her now, instead surging toward the Vraal and tangling around their feet. That was really all the answer she needed. 

Pulling out her longer blade and the boot knife at her ankle, she surged forward, trusting the trees to know what she needed even if she couldn’t talk to them in this state. Two vines of those small cats came down to wind around her armpits, pulling her swiftly into the air as she charged with a roar. It didn’t sound like a roar - it sounded like birds chirping - but the surrounding Vraal were started nonetheless and let out cries that sounded like dog barks. 

They were each holding a spear. Four of them broke off to charge her while the remaining went for the two in the center. Hopefully Jasmine could handle four. It was getting very distracting while she was hearing colors. 

The first she handled by kicking it square in the neck, sending it reeling off balance. The cats dropped her to the ground but remained wrapped around her, ready to pull her up at a moments’ notice. Two of them came in at either side and she dropped to the ground, letting the two almost spear each other in the chest. Darting to the right, she stabbed it in the ankle before the cat vines yanked her into the air.

There was a large dog-like creature lumbering through the branches of a nearby tree, gazing lazily in their direction. It seemed unalarmed. The birds sounded like cats, meowing in the trees. They didn’t look like birds but that was Jasmine’s logical assumption. 

Jasmine descended on the Vraal on the left, dodging his clumsy spear and plunging her longer knife into his neck. He went down and she danced through the air to the fourth untouched Vraal, grabbing his spear by the neck and changing its course to throw him off balance. She dropped and slipped into his space, stabbing the smaller blade into his chest. Two left. 

They came at her at the same time, and rather than drop this time, Jasmine jumped, just high enough to avoid the spears. They had expected her to go down and adjusted as such when they saw her move, so their spear points were thrown off. She placed a foot on each and willed her weight down on them, pushing the points into the soft earth, where they were consumed by small cats.

One of them pulled out a hunting knife while the other revealed a hand axe. Holding both knives up in an x-formation, she stopped the downward thrust of the hand axe and used the longer, heavier blade to push it aside. This gave her smaller blade access to his throat, which she took advantage of.

The remaining Vraal hesitated. She didn’t give him another moment to think, running at him with both knives in front of her. He held up his knife to defend but she met both of them in the x-formation again, blocking any downward force he was trying to build. He tried to kick her but the cat vines, coming up from the ground, seized his ankle. She grinned and pushed, the cat vines wrapped around her shoulders pulling behind him now to give her more leverage.

He used his other claw (hand?) to grab her wrist to try and stave her off, but a vine wrapped around that hand as well and his knife went spinning out of his hand. It was over in less than ten seconds after that. 

The last of them dropped and Jasmine looked up, panting, her head spinning, at the two tree-twig people, who were staring at her again. They had taken care of their Vraal and were approaching her, too quickly, she thought, and quickly backed away with both knives raised. They were talking, she thought, with the way the sound waves were moving at her like smoke rings again. She couldn’t understand a word they were saying and blinked rapidly, still on guard, trying to sort everything around her into some sort of order. 

The two tree people continued to speak at her as she looked around, watched the cat vines retreat into the trees. The colors were still leaking into the air and they still had  _ sound _ . If anything they were worse. 

The sound of the mushrooms in her pockets reminded her that they existed, so she lifted her bag and dumped the whole thing in front of the two tree people. They seemed to look down - it was hard to tell without them having necks - and then back at her. They exchanged sound waves between them and held up their arms, approaching her slowly and still talking at her. 

She blinked and swayed. Feeling light-headed and dizzy, hoping she wasn’t about to die high out of her mind on mushrooms, Jasmine promptly passed out.

  
  
  


Jasmine opened her eyes, blinking blearily. It was day time, though late in the evening if she had to guess. The trees above her were, mercifully, not bleeding color into the air. The birds sounded like birds and there were no cat vines swinging from branches. She didn’t really even see any normal vines. Just lots of leaves. No floating squirrels, or dogs, and no meowing. She sighed with relief. 

She tried to sit up and winced as her head spun. She lay back down and was careful to breathe as someone approached and sat next to her. 

“Jasmine?” 

“Barda?”

“How do you feel?” he sat next to her, eyeing her. 

“Dizzy, but at least everything looks normal,” she sighed. 

“You really should know better than to eat uncooked, unknown mushrooms,” he shook his head. “They could have been poisonous.”

“I’m sorry,” she grimaced. “It was… an experience, at least.”

“Mmhm.”

“I am sorry!”


End file.
